Jaya Peak

Jaya Peak, Indonesian Puncak Jaya, formerly Puntjak Sukarno, Gunung Carstensz, or Mount Carstensz, highest peak on the island of New Guinea, in the Sudirman Range, western central highlands. Located in the Indonesian province of Papua, the 16,024-foot (4,884-metre) summit is the highest in the southwestern Pacific and the highest island peak in the world. It marks the terminus of a glacier-capped ridge 8 miles (13 km) long that extends eastward from Mount Pilimsit (Ngga Pilimsit; formerly Mount Idenburg). The ridge, which falls sheer for some 10,000 feet (3,050 metres) on its northern and southern slopes, presents great walls of ice. Although the snowfield of Jaya Peak was reached as early as 1909 by a Dutch explorer, Hendrik A. Lorentz, the peak was not climbed until 1962, by an expedition led by an Austrian mountaineer, Heinrich Harrer.